CARLSBAD SHOWS SAN DIEGO THE WAY FORWARD ON TOURISM

A few months ago, I cataloged how Escondido’s tourism efforts were putting San Diego’s to shame, especially because of San Diego Mayor Bob Filner’s extended, pointless squabble with the local Tourism Marketing District.

Now, as Filner has at long last signed an agreement with the TMD, San Diego can finally begin to catch up.

But Hizzoner could still learn important lessons from another tourist-friendly North County city making some recent waves: Carlsbad. In late March, U-T reporter Phil Diehl reported on the Village by the Sea’s plans to resurface several key streets in order to create new bicycle lanes and widen old ones.

“We have some really wide travel lanes,” said Carlsbad deputy transportation director Bryan Jones, “so instead of giving the extra space to the travel lanes we are going to give the extra space to the bike lanes.”

Carlsbad Boulevard and El Camino Real will see their existing bike lanes widened or “buffered,” while Carlsbad Village Drive — the main drag running east-west through the Village — will receive a bike lane for the first time, all as part of the city’s effort, per Diehl, “to boost downtown business and promote tourism.”

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the city, Legoland continues to expand its campus, most recently by opening a 250-room Lego-themed hotel. Adorned with more than 3 million Lego bricks, graced at its entrance by a Lego dragon, and featuring bunk beds for kids and a Skyline Bar for adults, the three-story hotel seems to be aiming to capture Legoland-bound tourists who might otherwise stay elsewhere in the county.

But the regional TMD doesn’t see things that way.

“This obviously captures more people’s attention and gives them new reasons to come to San Diego,” said Kerry Kapich, a spokesperson for the district.

Unfortunately, the same TMD has been focused in recent months more on securing its funding for the coming years than on giving people reasons to come to San Diego, thanks to the intransigence of our mayor.

Filner, as has been widely reported here and elsewhere, refused since January to sign the marketing agreement between the city and the district, claiming it lacked certain protections for the city and didn’t reward hotel workers richly enough.

“On the TMD, had (Filner) come to me for advice early on,” San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith told me, “I would have advised him to sign the operating agreement that was approved by the city council in November and then exercise Section 5.1.3 that our lawyers put in there which says that the city is empowered to freeze the funds pending a lawsuit.”

Goldsmith, who has sparred publicly with Filner over the TMD, among other issues, believes that the existing language in the agreement represented “the best protection for the city” and that had Filner simply signed the agreement and frozen the funds, the parties involved could have avoided “all these machinations, the drama.”

That drama deprived the district of millions in marketing funds for months and prompted it to send layoff notices to some 85 employees; seven key employees, the U-T reported, in fact departed the TMD for greener pastures.

Rising to his own defense, Filner, after finally signing the agreement last week, said, of the district and the hotels it represents, “they had money, they could have been funding this the whole time. I’ve never understood why the city was included to begin with.”

Yet perhaps this is precisely the point: The mayor of San Diego fundamentally doesn’t seem to understand why the city needs to empower one of its most important industries to expand its reach and attract tourism dollars to our region. This troubling attitude reflects Filner’s basic orientation toward his job, a go-it-alone streak that rewards loyalty and discourages independent advice.

“The very first business meeting I had with the mayor,” Goldsmith told me, “was on Jan. 3, and the very first thing he said was, ‘I want to get something straight. I don’t have an obligation to tell you what I’m doing, and I don’t need to follow your advice.’ That’s where he’s at: We’re in the dark, and he may or may not follow our advice.”

When it comes to tourism, then, Hizzoner should look north to Carlsbad, where harmony prevails between bikes and cars, between tourists and local business, and between industry and city officials who support it.

Rosen is an attorney in Carmel Valley. Contact him at michaelmrosen@yahoo.com